*“With wisdom, you’ll see that things are just the way they are.”*

*“With wisdom, you’ll see that things are just the way they are.”*

Out of ignorance come thoughts (aviccā paccayā saṅkhārā)—an interconnecting chain of dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda). That’s how the mental elements (nāma-khandhas) work.

When a view arises, that view will stimulate thinking. For example, seeing that merit-making is good leads to an idea of going somewhere to make merit; such is a mental formation (saṅkhāra). The mind then acknowledges that thought through consciousness (viññāṇa), which in turn manifests itself as mind-body (nāma-rūpa)—the joining of the five aggregates: form, feelings, memories, thoughts, and consciousness.

The mind makes use of the form, or your body, to carry out its volition of going somewhere to make merit. Out of merit-making, a sense of happiness arises. With happiness comes a sense of appreciation or liking, leading to attachment of repeating the same action, to becoming (bhava), and to birth (jāti). Becoming and birth (bhava-jāti) is equivalent to repeating an action. Being content with one time of merit-making will lead to the next time. Being content with having born in this life will lead you to rebirth after you die and it just keeps on repeating. That’s a brief explanation.

Within the mind, there are many steps of dependent origination involved, starting from:
Out of ignorance come thoughts.
Out of thoughts comes consciousness.
Out of consciousness come mind-body.
Out of mind-body come the six senses.
Out of the six senses comes contact—eyes see forms and ears
hear sounds, giving rise to feelings.
Out of contact come feelings.
Out of feelings come cravings.
Out of cravings comes clinging or attachment—longing
for the body (form) to last and trying to hang onto it.
Out of clinging comes becoming—losing the old form
pushes one to look for and replace it with the new one,
generating the factors for rebirth.
Out of becoming comes birth.
Out of birth come sufferings.

Such a cycle keeps on repeating itself endlessly, which all comes down to its root cause. If the root cause is ignorance, it will lead you to think in a way of generating factors and conditions for rebirth and death. Your thoughts will revolve around sensual pleasures, fortune, prestige, and praise.

But if the root cause is towards Dhamma, your thoughts will be about giving, precepts, and meditation practice, helping you to keep on eliminating saṅkhāra —mental volitions.

With your practice, you’ll realise that thoughts are very irritating and tiresome: the more you think, the more your thoughts proliferate and the more agitated you get. If you can stop your thinking, you’ll feel at ease.

Just keep being aware of how things are; that is the best. Whatever you see, you don’t further speculate and just let things be the way they are meant to. You simply leave them be—you don’t form any positive or negative opinions about them. You don’t criticise and so on, which are the result of mental volitions.

When you form opinions, you’ll generate feelings—be they happy, sad, content, or discontent. These feelings will give rise to craving and desire, leading you to take care of things and get involved with other things.

With wisdom, you’ll see that things are just the way they are. No matter how much you try to fix or change things, they’ll just revert back to the way they were eventually. If you manage to resolve certain issues today, there will just be more or other issues to resolve tomorrow—it is endless.

All these worldly issues and matters are without end, unlike those of Dhamma. Dhamma will suddenly arise as soon as you’re aware that: you’re being too involved or clouded by certain issues or things; you need to detach yourself from them; and you need to take care of and calm your mind by stopping to proliferate. Then that is considered out of wisdom comes right thought.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

Youtube: Dhamma in English
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g